Home Depot Posts Sales and Earnings That Beat Wall Street

Home Depot has been able to buck the most recent downturn trends for retail posting on Tuesday that more consumers visited its stores during its first quarter than what had been anticipated.

The revenue and earnings for the do it yourself retailer for the quarter topped expectations on Wall Street and it raised its profit outlook for fiscal 2017.

Stock at Home Deport was trading up close to 2.5% before the opening bell on Tuesday morning.

Home Depot posted per share earnings of $1.67 while Wall Street forecasted $1.62. Revenue for Home Depot ended the quarter at $23.88 billion while analysts were expecting $23.74 billion.

Sales at same stores showed a growth of 5.5% globally while they were forecast to be slightly higher than 4%.

Home Depot announced that its comparable sales in the U.S., a metric that is monitored closely by Wall Street for stocks of retailers, climbed by 6% during its fiscal first quarter, after analysts were expecting just 4.3% growth.

The company’s positive quarterly results imply the housing recovery since the end of the Great Recession continues to have room for additional growth.

Net incomes at Home Depot reached $2.01 billion equal to $1.67 per share for the first quarter compared to $1.8 billion equal to $144 a share for the same quarter one year ago.

The average ticket for shopper’s at Home Depot during the quarter increased 3.9% compared to the same quarter in 2016 and sales per square foot of space in stores was up 4.5% during the quarter.

Home improvement businesses such as Home Depot and rival Lowe’s have performed well historically as housing data improves. As values of homes rise, shoppers for example become encouraged to invest additional money into their homes and properties.

As warmer weather takes hold across all the U.S. the home improvement retail industry is heading into its busiest part of the year.

For 2017, Home Depot, based in Atlanta, reaffirmed that it is expecting both comparable sales and revenue to increase 4.6%, a forecast quite rare for growth amidst the expectations of many retailers for contraction of sales at same-stores in 2017.

Home Depot upped its guidance for EPS for its full year and is now expecting its diluted growth in earnings per share, after share repurchases to be 11% ending the full year at 7.15%.

As of the close of trading on Monday, Home Depot stock is up over 18% the last 12 months and 17% since the start of 2017.